Introduction About Taboos Of Making Advertises

By Author: Jordon
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If visitors from another planet were to analyze all our commercials to deter-mine what Americans are like as a people, they would conclude that we habitually speak in superlatives and view the purchasing of products as a solution to all our problems? Our visitors would also note that, despite our preoccupation with beauty, youth, sex, security, and social acceptability, we are also a remarkably prudish people. This prudery would be documented by ads that suggest a decided Cartier Roadster Replica discomfort with speaking directly on the mass medium of television about the human body and its functions, and about the specific functions of products designed for use on taboo areas of the body. For example, ads for brassieres don't usually mention breasts. Similarly, ads for douches speak in a veiled fashion of "freshness" without indicating what is going to be made "fresher." "I don't know what 'freshness' is," notes ad critic Bob Garfield, "but it has to do with surf washing up on the beach."30 Nor do ads discuss the actual contents of diapers. ...
... Instead, advertisers show their absorbency by pouring blue liquid into them.

There are taboos in print as well. The Wall Street Journal was among the publications refusing an ad for a device to correct impotence, and in early 1999 the paper also rejected a version of an ad promoting Victories Secret Wall Street cyber-fashion show. In the rejected version, Tyra Banks is shown in bikini-like underwear with a flowing floor-length cape draped over her shoulders. The version that was carried in the Journal instead showed the model in lingerie more closely approximating a swimsuit. Since newspapers set their own standards, what is unacceptable to one may be acceptable to another. In this case, both USA Today and the New York Times carried the version that the Wall Street Journal had declined.

Some products are advertised seldom, if at all, on television. For example, there are no nationally televised ads for birth control pills, but such ads do appear in print.

If televised ads were their only source of information, our interplanetary travelers could make a strong case for a claim that Americans are uncomfortable discussing bodily functions or specific portions of the anatomy, if televised ads were their only source of information. What would the visitors say when they heard the characters in a soap opera agonizing over whether one of the protagonists Tag Heuer Carrera Replica Watches should have an abortion? Discussion of abortion in programming but no ads for contraceptives? No ads for abortion clinics? No ads for Planned Parenthood? They would wonder why programmers are more liberal than advertisers, or network censors more liberal about program content than ad content. The executive creative director at the New York ad agency Kirshenbaum and Bond remarked, "TV commercials have always been subject to far more scrutiny than programming," and continued, "I remember one commercial of mine being pulled off the air because it used the word hernia."32 (An episode of a sitcom, with Delta Burke as a U.S. representative, that showed and discussed condoms was not aired.)